The Cows Have Come Home to Eat

Monday meant that it was time to bring the cows in from the badlands. It started with a gather. They were pretty well scattered because the weather has been so good. 

We run in common with several of the neighbors. Two of them had already gathered their cows- one to another pasture in the badlands and one in to the ranch to get them ready for calving. Two others were still out there with us. That meant the next step was to sort their cows from ours.

Jekyll did his best to stay out of the way. He isn’t any help when it comes to this kind of work.

After the sorting, we trailed the girls home. I thought they would get a little excited when they were pointed toward home, but they didn’t care. They just wanted to graze.

Even though they didn’t want to walk, we managed to get them home before dark. A couple days later we vaccinated them, gave them a shot of mineral, and poured them for parasites. They were separated by young and old cows as they will be for the rest of the winter. This is mainly because the young cows eat slower than the old ones and need better nutrition to keep their body condition.  The first calf heifers were completely separate from all of this because they were already being fed to give them the nutrition that they need. We feed each of these groups differently to maintain their body condition as best we can.

I didn’t like to bring them in with all the good feed that was still in the badlands, but it is probably good for the young cows to have some hay and we managed to get the big work days out of the way before this storm that is coming. 

How about you? Are you ready for a little snow? 

by Brandon Greet